Things are changing now, with the advent of the new professional measurement system to be implemented by Spring GmbH, under the supervising of BRAT, the Romanian ABC. Another problem with Trafic.ro was the ownership - it is held by the biggest media broker on the market, Boom/Netbridge.

One might think there is a connection between the defection of the Netbridge team at Mediapro Interactiv, last year, and the change in terms of audience measurement.

First, they target web traffic only.

Second, they are not the only web traffic aggregator focused on the Romanian market, so they will naturally not be able to count everyone on the web even.

Thirdly, as previously pointed out, those are cookies. Not everyone accepts cookies on their computer (I just denied the one for Romanian Media Explained). And sometimes more than one person uses the same machine with a single cookie on it.

In talking with a journalist over the winter, I offered to help find some information on Romanian internet usage because it’s a topic I am interested in. Anecdotally, I’ve seen tremendous growth in only the last two or three years. However, I did manage to scrounge up a couple of interesting indicators from reliables sources.

Internet adoption rate in Romania as of March 2005 was 23.2% (4,940,000 Internet users as of March/05, 23.2% penetration). Additionally, I’ve seen recent reports that Romania broadband adoption rate, alone, has been growing at 15% per quarter.

http://www.internetworldstats.com/europa.htm
and
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0610/
respectively

That seems to roughly validate my personal guesstimate of probably 30+% and minimum 25% to be just about correct. Especially after you factor in family computers and internet cafe usage.

In any event, Trafic.ro should not be viewed at all as a source of data about the number of users. It can, on the other hand, be somewhat useful in spotting big trends in web surfing analysis… to some degree or another.

Which brings me to something I’ve wondered for a long, long time. Web stats are proprietary data with specific value. Why do commercial entities give that data away to Trafic.ro to make money from (and for competitors to possibly learn from).

Boggles the mind!

…